Archive: 11 April – 17 April 2011

Vince Cable believes David Cameron has come close to breaching the coalition agreement in his speech on immigration. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

In the old days cabinet ministers tended to resign before criticising the prime minister. If they wanted to go a step further and warn that the prime minister "risks inflaming extremism" then they would probably clear out of politics altogether.

Today, the deputy prime minister told health charity workers that his grandfather, who retired as the editor of the BMJ two years before the Lib Dem leader was born in 1967, would have been supportive of the NHS reforms.

Ed Miliband will be given a seat in the COBR room for today's meeting of the National Security Council. Photograph: Tony Kyriacou / Rex Features

A small piece of political history will be made today when Ed Miliband attends a meeting of the National Security Council.

Constitutional experts will no doubt be spluttering over the claret at this breach with convention.

Prime ministers regularly brief opposition leaders on sensitive matters of national security. But this is usually done in one-to-one meetings on privy council terms. The most high profile recent example of this was when Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, visited Tony Blair on a reasonably regular basis before, during and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Opposition leaders occasionally decline the briefings if they don't want to be tied to the prime minister. Relations between Blair and Charles Kennedy became frosty when the former Liberal Democrat leader opposed the Iraq war.

The Queen regards the Northern Ireland peace process as one of the finest domestic political achievements of her reign. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

The Queen will no doubt be beaming with great pride, assuming all goes well, when she becomes the first British monarch to visit the Irish Republic next month 18 days after the royal wedding.

Her smiles will not just be down to her happiness at the marriage. The Queen is said to regard the Northern Ireland peace process, which has led to the normalisation of Anglo-Irish relations, as one of the finest domestic political achievements of her reign.

It goes without saying that the Queen is delighted that violence has been massively reduced, though sadly not eliminated entirely, as Henry McDonald pointed out in a blog this morning. Henry reported that the itinerary for the visit, which I blogged about last week, will present a headache for Irish police as the Queen visits sights that are acutely sensitive for nationalists.

Norman Lamb has threatened to resign as a government whip unless a series of demands on the NHS reforms are met. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian

Andrew Lansley must be regretting one of his first acts as health secretary last May when he blocked Norman Lamb, his Liberal Democrat counterpart, from becoming a minister in his department. Lansley and Lamb, two of Westminster's greatest experts on the NHS, had had an almighty falling out in the run up to the general election over the financing of long term care for the elderly.

On the eve of the coalition's first anniversary that veto is coming back to haunt Lansley who deprived the department of health of a canny political operator. Lamb has the ear of Lib Dems at all levels of the party and would have made a much better job of finessing the NHS reforms.